The gang injunction is off track

Friends,

It sound like a worthwhile trade off at first. Known gang members get their freedom of motion restricted and in exchange law abiding residents get some protection from the gangs.

The problem is that neither are going to happen.

Now I am the one who is not going to be PC and I expect to be accused of a lot that I am not saying by speaking out against this injunction.

It is not legal to be a member of a criminal gang. So what do we mean by "known gang members"? They seem to mean suspected gang members against whom the police/DA/City Atty. do not have proof enough to prosecute.

And since there is no proof, and no arrests for real crime, then what makes us think they will go away? The real criminals are making money on what they do. They have no reason to go away because we make it semi illegal to look like one of them. The gangs will find a way to stay in business. Anyone want to bet on that?

What do we think our public relations are going to look like with the communities where these suspected gang members come from? We need to be winning hearts and minds and this kind of stuff is worthy of our failures in the mid east.

Do we think the gang injunction will get more people from those communities to help the police? Do we think that youth who are treated like gang suspects because they are of the same race and culture of real gang members will be LESS attracted to gang membership because of this injunction?

If the threat of real prison has not worked, why will they quit now?

The MOST main stream research institutes who are studying crime in the USA, especially in California all conclude that we are failing.

The lock-em-up policies have lead to a couple of disasters, one of which will lead to a major increase of early release to OAKLAND this and next year. Our prisons do near nothing in the way of reform. The parole system is a failure. We get about 1300 people a year dropped into our community after being brutalized in prison. They come to us without much in the way of integration support. Gang injunctions have been tried again and again. The results have been short term and poor at best.

Setting aside the very important legal stuff we need to ask ourselves how we will deal with this crime because we DO have a right to live in peace and security. To provide that common security is explicitly the job of government. In my view we have been neglected by our civic leaders in this. But they are too busy doing things like 3 strikes, gang injunctions, mandatory sentences, and basically exploiting our concerns about crime to pump up their political careers and get lots of funding to their supporters. The prison guard union has a lot of power. There are a lot of private companies who make a good living out of us locking people up.

I would back off on the gang injunction and spend the time, money and political capital on law enforcement that works. We should be trying to find out who the real gang members are and prosecute and we should be trying to isolate them from their peer group youth.

The documentary that people are referring to has been discredited. We have big crime problems, but they do not look like that TV show.

We have a high murder rate combined with a low percentage of victim's families willing to cooperate with the police. (ask the police about this, they will tell you) We also have a giant non-gang related crime problem. The police have to give up on over a thousand reported crimes a month because they have no way to even begin to solve those crimes.

Now let's put the legal argument back in. That argument is that no-one should be denied their liberties without due process. If you do not like it then your problem is with the US Constitution.

Our City Attorney should have known, and probably did, that this injunction would gain Oakland this lawsuit. This lawsuit is going to help us fight crime? Why pick a fight like this?

And do we really want Oakland going on record as backing the ideas that led to Club Guantanamo? Is that going to help us fight crime? Is that going to improve our public image?

One could go on a long time on this, and it would be a good idea to have a public debate on this. I'd be glad to participate.

I look forward to some honest discussion and respectful presentation of other ideas.

Don Macleay


t the ACLU has > to stop being so single minded. The citizens as a whole need
to be > protected from gangs. If we are imposing upon some of their rights, so
be it. > The rights of the rest of us to live in peace and free of fear from
gang > violence should take precedence over any inconvenience of a known gang
member > from being questioned or stopped by the police.
>
>
>

> Did any of you see any of the two hours' worth of expose on the Discovery >
Channel today (this afternoon) called "Gang Wars: Oakland"? It was > chilling,
at least to me. It made a truly convincing case for the ability of the > OPD
to pull over anyone known to be associated with a gang.